


At any cost

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Beauty - Freeform, Character Study, Drabble, Jealousy, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 18:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19892062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: Aphrodite has her reasons.





	At any cost

The girl, they say, is more beautiful than her.

Some princess, of a faraway land, attracts every boy from here to Hispania. Lovely thing, more beautiful than Aphrodite herself.

This does not please Aphrodite.

Her hands curl into fists, tangle in her silky long hair, catch on the pins and clips skewed harshly through it.

Beauty is pain, after all. And who has bled more than her?

These _mortals,_ a voice in her head hisses. Of what suffering do they know? _Nothing,_ absolutely nothing. It’s not her fault if she casts them to so, to a fate that their hubris requires. How dare they proclaim that they, the creations, could be somehow superior to her? She is a _god._ She is forever; they are but ephemeral specks on the horizon. 

It is nonsense. And they should be struck them down appropriately for it.

But another voice in her head will not stop nagging her, in spite of it all. When she rested upon her throne at Olympus, the words _you fear them_ carved into her mind like Zeus’ lighting to the sky.

_If they can be more beautiful than you, what even makes you a god? Without beauty…_

She’d glance at them. Demeter, poised high with a pleased smile. Athena, stoic posture and a text in one hand, a sharp knife in the other. Artemis, bow looped over her shoulder, eyes on the horizon, no doubt of anything. Hera, vicious and raging; but caring, loving to her core. Hestia, tending to the coals in the back of the room, unnoticed but content. 

_Without beauty, what on earth could allow her to stand among them?_


End file.
